


run

by dutchydoescoke



Category: Descendants (2015)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 22:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10840398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchydoescoke/pseuds/dutchydoescoke
Summary: It’s an urge she’s had to fight more than she cares to think about, running back home, where sheknewhow things worked.





	run

**Author's Note:**

> speculative fic for d2, because i'm currently having a shitload of feelings about it
> 
> very brief, vague implication of child abuse

It’s an urge she’s had to fight more than she cares to think about, running back home, where she _knew_ how things worked. Her mother was a walking nightmare on a good day, but Mal knew how to handle her. She could predict Maleficent’s moods by the twitch of an eyebrow or how she got out of bed in the morning. She could deal with that.

And she had her armor, her studded leather jacket and steel-toe boots, her _fuck off_ attitude honed by people challenging her place as one of the worst kids on the Isle.

Auradon wants her to smile and be polite and wear pretty dresses in soft pastels, where her eye-searing green dragons and studded gloves have no place. Auradon wants her to be the princess they feel Ben deserves.

Ben doesn’t push her to it, and she knows that, like she knows that if Jay or Evie even _suspected_ him of doing, he’d be a smear on the carpet, king or not. But he doesn’t seem to grasp the intensity of the spotlight she’s under or how it’s affecting her.

She lets her hair grow out and doesn’t dye it again, leaves the purple to become pastel tips.

They fight about it, sometimes, where she mentions the stress and he doesn’t seem to understand it, because it’s a fact of his life and has been since birth. He tries to tell her it’s okay to go back to her leather and purple hair if it makes her more comfortable, but she knows better. She doesn’t want to see _yet another_ headline questioning when they’re going to break up because they’re too different, doesn’t want to deal with the questioning from overly curious reporters and paparazzi who think they understand her relationship with Ben better than she does, doesn’t want to deal with someone poking their nose in her business and asking her if she’s returning to her villainous roots.

She snaps, eventually, a snarky comment to Ben about how everything would be a lot better if she could just tell them all to fuck off. Ben fires back, because he has just as much of a temper as she does and has his own stress to live with, reminding her that she’s not on the Isle and can’t _do that_ , no matter how much she wants to, in a tone that Mal would almost call patronizing.

She knows it’s not the Isle, but she knows the Isle and how it works like the back of her hand, and Auradon will _always_ see her as a villain first, Ben’s girlfriend second.

She doesn’t have much to pack, and vanishing like a thief in the night is remarkably easy for a place as secure and safe as Auradon supposedly is.

Her still-unfamiliar conscience almost makes her regret not saying goodbye, but she ignores it. She’s going home, and that kind of sentiment will get her killed.

She doesn’t look back.


End file.
